Vaccines cannot work if you don't use them. Vaccines that nearly wiped out a disease until immunization rates dropped probably weren't ineffective. But believe your rationalizations if it makes you feel better.

I'm not a vaccine o phobe..... but I raised my kids in the era of "do what you're told". It was a little unnerving to see the massive expansion of the number of "childhood" vaccines with very little information about what was driving the expansion other than "experts recommend it". If you asked for more information about anything you were given the stink eye and labelled a problem. When people don't get answers they become suspicious and untrusting which has left an opening that folks like McCarthy leapt through.

But then again, I don't get the idea of "well baby" check ups for kids who are obviously developing normally and have no health concerns. It seems it would free up pediatricians to spend more quality time evaluating kids who are sick and need of intensive treatment.... I'm probably a crazy loon.... but all four of them survived childhood with no major or minor health issues.

If the vaccine is doing its job, the incidence of the disease falls off and it may become as common to not hear of the disease occurring as it previously was common to hear of it occurring. With disease risk disappearing from common experience, it shouldn't be a surprise that some people will decide that the vaccine risk is not worth it.

A fertile ground for well-meaning as well as relatively unprincipled people to articulate reasons why vaccines should be avoided. If this mindset really took hold, then it would likely last until the disease returns in significant amounts where then the balance would shift yet again towards vaccination.

I blame a media that insists on giving a microphone to any famous idiot under the theory that if they're famous, they must be smart. Only slightly less culpable is the media that assumes that if a person is accomplished in one area, they must be thoughtful, informed, and intelligent in every area.

i blame andrew wakefield, who phonied the data and the attorney richard barr who bribed him to do it. mccarthy is a result, not the source of the problem.

"But Deer's investigation - nominated in February 2011 for two British Press Awards - discovered that, while Wakefield held himself out to be a dispassionate scientist, two years before the Lancet paper was published - and before any of the 12 children were even referred to the hospital - he had been hired to attack MMR by a lawyer, Richard Barr: a jobbing solicitor in the small eastern English town of King's Lynn, who hoped to raise a speculative class action lawsuit against drug companies which manufactured the triple shot."

Reasons for resurgence of most of these diseases:1.) Vaccines which simply DO NOT WORK well enough to cause herd immunity. The 80% effective rate for current vaccines can not eliminate the diseases since a rate of 90% or more is required for herd immunity.2.) Europe and the US have been repeatedly re-infected by the Orthodox Jewish communities of Israel who refuse to be vaccinated for religious reasons. Tourists to and from Israel have been the source of almost every outbreak for years now.But keep blaming Jenny McCarthy if it makes you feel better.

Vaccines cannot work if you don't use them. Vaccines that nearly wiped out a disease until immunization rates dropped probably weren't ineffective. But believe your rationalizations if it makes you feel better.

And yet if you look at the incidence of breakouts of diseases like whooping cough or pertussis, the culprit is not unvaccinated children, its that the vaccines we are currently using are less effective than they were a generation ago.

It's easy to blame some fringe element, but they really are very few and the prevalence of outbreaks is greater than their numbers would explain.

We need to do a better job on vaccines and it starts with going back to vaccines that worked better.

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